INDICATIONS OF AGE. 71 



At nineteen, the angles begin to wear off, and the central teeth 

 are again oval, but in a reversed direction ; viz., from outward, 

 inward, and at twenty-one they all wear this form. 



" It would of course be folly to expect any thing like a 

 certainty in an opinion of the exact age of an old horse, as 

 drawn from the above indications. Stabled horses have the 

 marks sooner worn out than those that are * at grass, and crib- 

 biters still sooner. At nine or ten, the bars of the mouth be- 

 come less prominent, and their regular diminution will designate 

 increasing age. At eleven or twelve, the lower nippers change 

 their original upright direction, and project forward horizon- 

 tally, and become of a yellow color. 



"The general indications of old age, independent of the 

 teeth, are the deepening of the hollows over the eyes ; gray 

 hairs, and particularly over the eyes, and about the muzzle ; 

 thinness and hanging down of the lips ; sharpness of the 

 withers, sinking of the back, lengthening of the quarters ; and 

 the disappearance of windgalls, spavins, and tumors of every 

 kind. 



" Horses, kindly and not prematurely used, sometimes live 

 to between thirty-five and forty -five years of age ; and Mr. Per- 

 cival gives an account of a barge horse that died in his sixty- 

 second year." 



On this head of age, I should not have considered it worth 

 the while to insert any thing beyond the cut of the complete 

 aged mouth, fig. 11, with the description accompanying it, but 

 for the prevalent opinion, constantly inculcated by interested 

 dealers in the United States, that the age of a horse, after eight 

 or nine years, can be as certainly and as exactly predicated by 

 mouth-mark, and his exact age guaranteed accordingly, as pre- 

 viously to that period. 



* In relation to this, Mr. Spooner, in his appendix to Youatt on the Horse, Eng. 

 ed. p. 486, decidedly demurs, in these words : — "A careful examination leads me to 

 believe that the observation in the text, that the teeth are developed much earlier 

 in young animals that are corn-fed and taken early into the stable, and consequently 

 * that in thoroughbred horses the changes of the teeth are earUer than in animals 

 that remain in a state of nature, is erroneous. I think them, of the two, rather the 

 more backward." 



I note this discrepancy only to point out how dubious all indications, and how 

 fallacious all judgments are, after eight years. H. W. H. 



